If you'd like to see the larger animaris umerus in action click video link. Theo Jansen is an engineer/artist spending his life creating animals from PVC electricity tubes. They walk on windpower. This week he experiments at the beach trying to attach a water sensor system so when it walks free and the tide comes up it will seek dry grounds.

I saw his TED lecture online about ayear ago. He is an interesting artist/engineer. His contraptions use 2 liter soda bottles to store up compressed air when the wind dies down on those lovely Dutch beaches. (I am pleasantly reminded of the scene on the beach, in Soldier of Orange, when the Dutch partisan are challenging one another to pronounce the name of the town Scheveningen which served as a shibboleth at the time.) The locomotion mechanism is simple and elegant. They are beautiful.

Always happy when someone agrees in admiration for a thing of beauty. I wrote the name by memory so the h is out , but it doesn't change much to the meaning. I add a link here to a flickr-image ( better than mine) which shows those two liter plastic bottles you talk about clearly. Up the tail. Such a vieuw!

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